Rebecca is no longer posting on this blog, but it has not been deleted so the posts may be kept for reference. Please visit tendtoramble.blogspot.co.uk, where Rebecca has continued to ramble on about books and more. Thank you.

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Saturday, 4 June 2011

Ideas

On Girls Heart Books, Sophia Bennett posted a list of where she gets her ideas from, here they are:

Out of nowhere. My idea for a girl who was a secret fashion designer just hit me one day, while I was sorting out the laundry. OK, so not ‘nowhere’, exactly – my bathroom. I occasionally get ideas from my bathroom.

My childhood. Writing gives me the chance to live out all the fantasies I had while I was growing up. To be honest, I get more ideas from remembering when I was little than from my bathroom. A few more, anyway.

Radio and TV, newspapers and Twitter. Big news stories, small ones, crazy things that happen to people … it all goes in and comes out again later as character or a scene in a book. I mostly listen to the radio in my kitchen, so that ends up being a good place for ideas too.

The London Underground. Crow’s story in Threads was a direct result of seeing a poster about the Night Walkers of Uganda and not being able to get it out of my head. Public transport can be very useful.

Things that annoy me. There’s a truly awful magazine advert for a posh watch that drives me crazy every time I see it and one day I’ll write a big, fat novel based on the irritating people in it. Bad things will happen to them. I can’t wait.

My family. Shh. Don’t tell them. They haven’t worked it out yet.

Schools. I visit. I look. I learn. If I visit your school – beware. If you’re particularly interesting, you might end up in a book one day. So, for example, might your school hall, your teacher’s haircut and the view from the library windows.

Emails from fans. My next book, The Look, is inspired by an email I got last June from a girl called Elizabeth. She asked a simple question. My initial answer was ‘no’, but that didn’t seem to do it justice, somehow. The extended version is 80,000 words long and counting.